View full sizeJohn Berry / The-Post-StandardA fire Monday night at the Town Square Apartments in Baldwinsville has displaced eight families.

Baldwinsville, NY – A UPS driver, two Baldwinsville police officers and two Onondaga County deputies rousted eight families out of a burning apartment building Monday night.

Darryl Cooper, a UPS Freight driver, said he was driving home from work on Oswego Street at around 11 p.m. when he saw smoke in the area.

He said at first he thought it was someone burning leaves.

"Then “I happened to be coming up over the hill when I saw flames start going through the roof,” Cooper said Tuesday afternoon.

Cooper said he pulled into the Town Square Apartments complex at 116 Oswego St. and began knocking on the doors of apartments in the building that was on fire.

He found a woman in the hallway. “I don’t think she realized the fire had spread as much as it had,” said Cooper, 40, of Lysander.

He and the woman began knocking on doors, Cooper said.

View full sizeJohn Berry / The-Post-StandardA fire that occurred late Monday night at the Town Square Apartments in Baldwinsville has displaced eight families.

Police arrived within minutes. They too ran inside the building to roust the residents, Cooper said. By that time “most of the roof was starting to cave in,” he said.

The fire was moving rapidly by the time officers Robert Thibault and James Cerankowski arrived on the scene, said Baldwinsville Police Chief Michael W. Lefancheck.

The officers ran into the building, knocking and kicking at doors. They were joined by Onondaga County deputies Robert Martin and Andrew Ecker, the chief said.

A number of people still inside were helped out by the officers and deputies, the chief said.
One Baldwinsville officer told him “Chief, if we hadn’t been a couple of minutes away we might have lost some people,” Lefancheck said.

As officers did a head count of the residents, Cooper, a former volunteer firefighter, said he hung back and watched the firefighters work.

No officer took down Cooper's name, although one told Lefancheck that he recalled seeing a man in a UPS shirt in the parking lot when police arrived.

Cooper said he isn't looking for recognition. "It’s no big deal. I did what anybody else would have done," said the father of five.

The fire was called in at 11:02 p.m. It took 40 minutes for firefighters from Baldwinsville, Belgium/Cold Springs, Phoenix, Lakeside, Liverpool and Memphis to bring it under control

One of the residents was burned on the hand. No firefighters were injured.

The owners of the apartment complex put residents up in the Clarion hotel on Farrell Road, according to the American Red Cross of Central New York. The same company owns both properties.

The fire was accidentally caused by the “careless disposal of a smoking material,” said Joseph Rinefierd, director of fire for the Onondaga County Department of Emergency Management.

It began on the back deck of one of the second floor apartments in the complex, he said.